This special session will examine how contemporary Taiwan literature andculture mimic, adopt, assimilate, transform, or resist foreign influences ofEurope, US, Japan, and the emerging Korea. An island 100 miles offshoremainland China, Taiwan has been politically and culturally marginalized. Inthe process of modernization, Taiwan adopted Western and Japanese modelswithout much questioning. Over the past decade, "Taiwan First" hasdominated the government's educational and cultural policies. Officialideology, however, only bespeaks Taiwan's lack of an unambiguous identityand a cultural anchor. Many Taiwan writers, artists, cultural leaders andeducators received their training in Europe, US, or Japan. How do theyperceive and represent self and the culturally superior other? What aretheir poetic or aesthetic strategies in negotiating between the local andthe global? Do the concepts of neocolonialism, self-Orientalism orOccidentalism apply? Topics may include, but are not limited to cinema,performance, popular culture, and art.

Please send abstracts electronically by March 27 to blei_at_ntu.edu.tw.